Back in the day, you might not even have labelled Luka Modric as “one to watch”. The midfielder was in Germany in 2006 for his first major tournament but had only just squeezed into the World Cup squad. If you had to pick a rising star from that Croatia roster, you probably would not have gone with him.
Modric was 20 and had established himself at Dinamo Zagreb after loans at Zrinjski in Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Premijer liga and Inter Zapresic, a small club from a western Zagreb suburb. He had made his Croatia debut in March of that year in a 3-2 friendly win over Argentina but anyone trying to identify the country’s next big thing was more likely to have settled on Niko Kranjcar.
